Tag: Ite Dreist

The quote is from the Australian ceramist, Paul Davis. Markus Boehm told it to me and it fits my talk at the Third European Wood Firing Conference in LeBorn perfectly. If you know Paul Davis (great guy, great sense of humour), you will understand that this statement was partly made in jest. Still, for many, wood firing is all part of the male realm and the building of wood kilns and the firing of them has to be the biggest, the longest, and the dirtiest consuming vast quantities of wood for days and weeks. As the School of Art and I began to plan for a new wood kiln that would be a learning tool, large kilns with firing schedules more than twelve hours were rejected. We wanted a kiln that the students could fire in less than a day and fire so often that they could learn through experience. There was also a huge desire to be kinder to Mother Earth.

Does anyone out there think that this would be a controversial issue?

Over the course of my research on the impact of the Vietnam resisters on Canadian ceramics, it became very clear that many of the men who immigrated believed and still understand that the women who came with them – whether it was a supportive partner, sister, mom, or friend – gave up nothing. I was told so many times that the women could go back and forth freely without fear of going to jail that I almost took those statements for granted. But, it is not true. I was one of those women. I left behind a very elderly grandmother who had raised me, my parents, and friends. Others left behind careers, studios, and commissions. The voices of those women were quite literally silenced.

There are only two Japanese women who fire with wood. Why? There is an ancient myth that the kilns will blow up if the women take part in the firing process. Really?

Ironically, if you look at the percentage of women firing wood kilns, many alone, in Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region, north of Berlin, you will discover that there are more women firing wood kilns than men. Over the years I have been fortunate to meet some of these talented individuals and I am grateful. They have shown me that women can manage trees, cut them down, haul them to the area for cutting, stacking, and drying. And, finally, they can fuel their kilns with these logs. Ute Dreist is only one of many women working in the field. Others include Birke Kastner, Charis Lober, Katrin Otolski, Angelika Reich, Silwia Barke, Regine Schonemann, and Christiane Lambertz amongst others. There are similar percentages in other parts of Northern Europe, France, and Scandinavia. Indeed, a survey in Canada shows that the number of women who choose to wood fire their ceramics is growing steadily.

So what is the problem? Is it just me? Or is the books and the journals in North America that continue to feature more men than women? How about exhibitions that focus solely on wood fired vessels or sculpture? It is the same. This is surely bothersome. In ceramics classes across Canada today, the vast majority are female students. Last year I had only one male student out of twenty-one in my class. There are currently no male students registered in my fall wood firing class. I haven’t gotten to the point – yet- where I am going to start to count the number of women featured in journals, books, and exhibitions like the Guerrilla Girls did when they took on the New York City Fine Art establishment and started a movement —- but I am almost there. The examples of wood fired work in the display cases at the School of Art have only the work of men. So who are these young women to look up to? And who is giving these young students ‘their’ vision of wood fired ceramics?

It all comes back to the featured image of the new wood kiln. The whispers behind my back were not only about the size of the kiln but its style along with great disbelief that a kiln could be built and fired in a week. I mean the ole’ girl went off her rocker, right? That is the male view. And it is that male view that is dominant in Canada. If I could take these young women and transport them to see Priscilla Mouritzen firing a similar wood kiln or let them have coffee with Julia Nema, then they would have some role models. But, in Canada and especially in the Prairies where we don’t have anything but planted trees, the ideal kiln is the anagama. Apparently there are at least twelve of them in the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan. Now, I have nothing against these medieval Japanese kilns who hurl smoke in the air and consume large quantities of wood except for just that – they hurl vast amounts of black smoke in the air, consumming larger and larger quantities of wood. There are alternatives. Paul Davis, who studied in Japan for years, will tell you that there are a lot of “ugly brown pots” coming out of those anagamas. So why are they so privileged? I wonder.

Stay tuned. This whole issue was being discussed by some men back in 1973 including Fred Olsen.

Having great fun making sake cups for the Kendo Society

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